Dumb people use Internet Explorer, survey says

People who use Internet Explorer are dumber than people who use Firefox, Chrome, Safari and other Web browsers, according to a consulting company.

No, really – that’s the result of a recent survey of 100,000 people. Vancouver, B.C.-based AptiQuant Psychometric Consulting offered free online IQ tests and recorded not only their scores, but which browsers they used. And users of Microsoft’s IE scored lowest on the list.

First, let me get this out of the way: Many, many people will say IQ tests are not a good, or even relevant, measure of intelligence. That’s fine and dandy. But let’s set that aside for the moment and take a look at the survey results.

Internet Explorer 6 users scored lowest on AptiQuant’s online IQ test, followed by users of Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 9 then Internet Explorer 8. When you get to Mozilla Firefox users, the IQ scores jump to a new level – though Firefox users didn’t score as well as people using Google Chrome and Apple Safari. IQ scores jump again when you get to users of more obscure choice, such as IE in a Chrome frame and browsers Camino and Opera – which most people probably haven’t even heard of.

“The results are really not that surprising,” AptiQuant said in a news release. Um … really?

On its website, AptiQuant suggests it’s dumb people who never update their browsers. Despite Microsoft’s continued efforts, there are still people and companies out there using Internet Explorer 6, which launched in 2001; the current version is IE9.

From AptiQuant:

Internet Explorer has traditionally been considered a pain in the back for web developers. Any IT company involved in web development will acknowledge the fact that millions of man hours are wasted each year to make otherwise perfectly functional websites work in Internet Explorer, because of its lack of compatibility with web standards. The continuous use of older versions of IE by millions of people around the world has often haunted web developers. This trend not only makes their job tougher, but has also pulled back innovation by at least a decade. But with the results of this study, IT companies worldwide will start to take a new look on the time and money they spend on supporting older browsers.